U.S. lawmakers are coming to grips with what experts warned Thursday is a dangerous and escalating threat of homegrown violent extremism following last month’s riots on Capitol Hill.
Members of the House committee on homeland security heard chilling warnings about a “high likelihood” of domestic terror attacks fuelled by the divisions that were on such stark display on Jan. 6.
That date was an inflection point in the nature of the terror threats faced by the U.S., said Elizabeth Neumann, a counterterrorism expert and former Department of Homeland Security official.
Prior to the riots, terrorism was largely an international threat, Neumann said. Afterward, it became a domestic one.
“There is a high likelihood of violence in the coming months on a range of softer targets associated with their perception of the deep state, including infrastructure, mainstream media, law enforcement, big tech and elected officials,” Neumann told the committee.
“Sadly, I do believe that we will be fighting domestic terrorism that has its roots and inspiration points from Jan. 6 for the next 10 to 20 years.”
Neumann called it “paramount” that Congress establish a bipartisan commission on domestic terrorism to establish a “shared understanding” of the threat and to prevent discussions from being co-opted and manipulated by the very people they are meant to target.
Extremist ideology, she said, has been “mainstreamed and normalized” as a result of political rhetoric, conspiracy theories and social media communications that exploit humour and memes “to mask the danger of those ideas present.”
Such a commission, she added, could explore the pros and cons of putting domestic extremism on the same legal footing as international terrorism. Under current U.S. law, it’s typically easier for authorities to prosecute crimes as terrorist incidents when they have a link to organizations overseas.
On Wednesday, Canada got out ahead of that idea when the federal government designated the white-supremacist Proud Boys, who played a prominent role in last month’s storming of the Capitol, as a terrorist organization.
Also among the 13 groups added to the list were The Base, the Atomwaffen Division and the Russian Imperial Movement, all described as neo-Nazi and white-supremacy organizations.